


Wasteland, Baby! (EDWARD CULLEN)

by RockWithItWriting



Category: Life and Death - Stephenie Meyer, Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Closeted Character, M/M, insecure character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 02:47:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20499599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RockWithItWriting/pseuds/RockWithItWriting
Summary: beau realizes that maybe he shouldn’t be so afraid.





	Wasteland, Baby! (EDWARD CULLEN)

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If I had known how easy it was to fall in love, maybe I wouldn’t have been so afraid of Edward Cullen. His eyes were golden, like the sunrise. He had hair so dark red it looked brown, and I wondered why that sort of color looked good with his pale skin and why it didn’t match me in the same way. Edward Cullen was beautiful in a painful sort of way, and I was just plain.

But plain worked for me. Jessica gravitated to me because of it, Mike saw no competition in me, and I was able to blend into the background for a few months at Forks. I balanced Charlie’s checkbook better than he ever had, I cooked more food than he’d dared to even think about cooking. I fixed the truck when it broke down on our way to a meeting for all of the county cops. I aced my tests, learned more Spanish than I ever had in Phoenix… And then, in October as Halloween was nearing… Edward Cullen and I met for the first time directly. 

Mr. Molina was sick, out with the flu that was going around. Our principal swore it wasn’t the Swine Flu, but I carried enough hand sanitizer to keep the Spanish Influenza off of me if I needed to. Edward Cullen, who always sat six rows behind me in biology, was moved by the long-term substitute Mrs. Cullen - his Mom! And I thought Renee was embarrassing - to sit next to me. Something about his eyesight, and his partner distracting him. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the other way around; every girl who was partnered with Edward Cullen experienced a sharp grade drop. They just couldn’t focus around him, and I don’t blame them. The guy looked like he just walked off of a model shoot, and with a mom like Mrs. Cullen it’s understandable. She was stunning too, but not really my type. Also, she was my teacher. And, like, ten years older than me.

It was when Edward sat down next to me that I knew he was trouble. Maybe he knew that I was trouble then, too, because he stiffened. He looked like half of The Kiss, a man of marble with a tender touch but a far away aloofness that made him unreachable but more attractive. “Hello.” I greeted him with a small smile and a nod when he sat down, and he turned those golden brown eyes on me. They looked angry, absolutely shining with rage.

When he spoke his voice was calm, unlike his eyes. “Hello.” He nodded back at me, and then turned to face the teacher. She wasn’t even talking, instead working on wheeling in a TV stand. Half of the room groaned, and the other half allowed themselves to cheer weakly. I was in the latter half - Charlie had some reports he needed sorted, but his secretary was out with Not-Swine-Flu as well, so I volunteered to sort them. I doused my hands in hand sanitizer before I pulled copies of the reports out of my bag; I’d sort them at school and then continue the pattern with the real files at home.

“So, you’re a police officer?”

I startled, my brain stopping and then kicking into high gear to process what was happening. Edward Cullen was talking to me, taking an interest in what I was going, even though he still had the wrath of the devil in his eyes. “I, uh, no my Dad is. He’s Charlie Swan.” And he probably already knew that - dumb. I was just dumb, and I looked like it. Hand sanitizer laid out, police files on my biology desk, my mouth hanging open because Edward Cullen was going out of his way to interact with me even though it looked like he would rather die.

“Yes, you’re Beau Swan. I’ve heard a lot about you in the few months you’ve been here.” I raised my eyebrows, slowly putting my files back into my backpack. Mrs. Cullen had given me a disapproving eyebrow, but not because I was whispering during the movie with her son. I think it was the jumbo bottle of paranoia I had been carrying around.

“You got my name right. Thank you. Not many people around here get it right on the first try.” Edward looked like I caught him in a lie, like I was upset but I shook my head at him. I bit my lip and tried to explain what I meant. “No, it’s not a bad thing. It’s good, I promise.”

“I’m Edward Cullen.” He leaned forward and his cologne wrapped around me like a blanket. Holy crow, he smelled good. I needed to figure out the cologne he used, it was marginally better than whatever hand-me-downs Charlie kept in the cabinet. “Of course, I’m sure you already know that." 

“Edward of the Cullen Clan fame. My father thinks very highly of Dr. and Mrs. Cullen, you know. Not many twenty year olds would be willing to put their lives on hold to raise quite a few teenagers, no matter if you are all family by blood or not.” Edward nodded, looking out the window for a split second. I worried I offended him, but then he was smiling at me. It left me breathless, heart pounding in my chest. I hoped I wasn’t blushing, because that could not happen, because if that happened then Edward would know that I was-

I cut myself off from that train of thought. I shook it out of my head and shifted my body away from Edward subtly. “Tell you father that I said thank you. I’m sure my father shares that sentiment.” God, he talked like he was from another lifetime. I liked it. “Beau, would you like to eat lunch with me today? I would love to get to know you more.”

I whipped around to look at Edward so fast my neck cracked. Had he really asked me to eat lunch with him? His family? I knew of his family, but not personally. I knew that Jasper and Rosalie were twins, that they were Dr. Cullen’s niece and nephew, and that his sister had died in a car accident so he took them in. I knew that Emmett and Alice were siblings, but Mrs. Cullen’s younger siblings she took in when her parents passed. I knew that Edward was Mrs. Cullen’s distant cousin, second or third, and that she was the only family member left alive willing to take him after his parents and siblings perished in a house fire. That was the extent of my knowledge on the Cullen family, and none of it pointed to Edward willingly asking me to eat lunch with them.

“This isn’t a joke, is it?” I asked instinctually. “That’s not a funny joke.” Edward cocked his head, smirking at me. “I’m being serious." 

“No, it’s not a joke. I’m interested in you, and I’d like to get to know you better. I’m sure my mother will ask me about you when I get home today, so I’d really like to have something to say to her that’s not his name is Beau and he sorts his father’s cases during Biology. She already knows all of that.” I looked between him, the television, and Mrs. Cullen. She was pretending not to pay attention, but she wasn’t really grading any of those tests she was holding. She hadn’t even picked up her pink pen yet.

“I, right. Okay, yeah, I’ll sit with you at lunch today. I’ll just have to let Jessica and Mike know.” Edward chuckled and glanced behind us. I let my eyes trace over the shape of his face before following his eyes. Jessica and Mike were three rows behind us, pretending like they weren’t watching me interact with Edward. “Maybe I won’t have to tell them I won’t be joining them today.”

“I have a feeling they already know.” Edward sounded humorous, and the anger in his eyes was slowly fading. It was replaced by something else… Something dangerous. Something that sent shivers down my spine. “If you’re uncomfortable you can say no.”

“Why don’t you join me?” I blurted, ducking my head when I realized I was speaking just a little bit too loud. “Or we could, uh, we could get a separate table. To ourselves. Just so our friends - your family, I mean - don’t? Uh!” My voice rose and broke when I realized I didn’t actually know what I was saying. It didn’t matter if someone interrupted us, because Edward Cullen was not asking me on a lunch date to our high school canteen, he was asking to hang out with me so his mother didn’t ream him when he got home. Those were radically different things.

“That sounds like a great idea, Beau. At least we won’t be interrupted, then, you know?” Before Edward turned back to face the front of the room I could have sworn he winked. I wouldn’t know, I short circuited and went back to sorting the files before I could really process what had happened.

From that day on Edward became more and more obvious. Even to someone who was as obtuse as I was, I understood. He was flirting with me, and I did not like it one bit. It was one thing to riddle out something that I’ve never said out loud, but then he had to display it on a neon sign above my head. Edward Cullen put a target on my back, and I still thought he was a man with eyes like a sunrise and a mind I could fall in love with. He brought me books he thought I would like, bought me the latest Green Day CD when it came out, claiming he was already there to buy one for himself.

He made me a mix of all of his favorite classical songs, and gave me a list of why he liked them written in his small, neat calligraphy. Every day I fell a little more in love with Edward Cullen, and I didn’t see it stopping any time in the future. And then he asked me to go to a baseball game with his family, and my life changed. Not for the better, not for the worse. Just… Changed. Edward took me to the field hours before his family would gather to play, and he told me his secret.

I, of course, already knew. I had pieced it together two, maybe three weeks before that moment. He was always so cold, he never ate, his whole family was always camping when the sun was shining, his eyes changed colors for God’s sake - and it wasn’t just the shitty fluorescent lights Forks High used. I hadn’t figured out why there weren’t murders being reported on the days they went _ camping _ or how they were feeding off of people without said people freaking out, but I was on my way to a realization when he told me in the meadow.

“We’re not bad.” Edward explained, sitting far too close to me for comfort. “I promise we’re not overtly dangerous. We are, of course, dangerous. But Jasper was the last one to feed off of a human, and even then that was decades ago.”

“He was changed during the Civil War, right?” I was trying to keep track of where everyone came from, what it explained about him. Jasper, one of Edward’s brothers, looked like a soldier. “Did he fight for the South?”

“No,” Edward laughed, “No, thank goodness. Jasper fought for the North. Youngest soldier they’d ever seen.” I relaxed into the grass we were sitting on.

“Good,” I laughed, too, “I don’t think I could respect a Confederate soldier.” Edward looked at me in the way that he had been looking at me - the way that made me feel like he was making fun of me and telling everyone in the halls I was gay. Except, this time, when he looked at me like that we were alone. “Edward, why are you telling me all of this?”

“I trust you.”

“It has to be so much more than that, though. Weren’t you just telling me that vampires have rules? Humans aren’t supposed to know.” A sudden panic strikes me, and I sit up quickly. My vision swirls - anemia - and then Edward is sitting up, as well. “Am I not human?”

“Beau, I think you would know if you weren’t human.” He laughed, “No, I just trust you. So much more than you know.” God, he was so beautiful. I found myself leaning in, smiling softly. The sun was dipping in and out from behind a cloud, and every so often his skin would shine like diamonds lingered just below the surface. I was jealous of Edward, of the way he seemed to be so flawless, the way he turned heads, the way he was the opposite of plain. He was beautiful, and I was falling in love with him.

As I was leaning in, so was Edward. He was slower, more cautious, but his chilled lips brushed mine and Edward surged forward, cupping my face. I gasped, leaning into him as my hands wrapped around his wrists. Edward kissed me like he didn’t need air, and he didn’t. I did, but I didn’t care. His kiss was everything and nothing, like yin-and-yang between good and extremely-very-good. His body was cold but his lips on mine were like fire. I couldn’t get enough and when Edward pulled away, eyes wide and looking at me like I hung the moon. I’m sure my face was one of awe that someone like Edward, so perfect, would bother with me. I was just a clumsy, plain human boy and he chose me to take to the meadow, to bear his secrets to, to kiss.

“Beau Swan, you are the most fascinating and amazing human I have met in all of my one hundred and four years of life.” Edward kissed me again, laying me back as the sun broke through the clouds, the reflection from Edward’s skin dancing on my closed eyelids.

If I had known how easy it was to fall in love, maybe I wouldn’t have been so afraid of Edward Cullen. If I had known that I was born to become a vampire, maybe I wouldn’t have been so afraid of James. If I had known that Charlie knew about vampires before even I did, maybe I wouldn’t have left him in Forks for two years before changing him.


End file.
